I write longhand because I feel as if I am skipping an essential step in the process if I go straight to typing up the work. Is it better that I write longhand? Does that make the work truer? More human? It’s a choice. I could choose to skip writing by hand in notebooks and type straightaway onto my computer. And maybe one day I will. Maybe that initial first step, the one that I consider primary, will fall away. My handwriting is in a process of erosion. What marks the pages are glyphs that are getting harder and harder to decipher. I feel as if I’m laboring (with love and intent) to transcribe an alien’s handwriting. My hand is not keeping up with my mind (did it ever?), so I am writing in a state of clipped, fractured, speed-demon shorthand. I am trying to capture the music of the mind. The movements. Or so I tell myself. I sell myself hocked watches regularly, unable to gauge if they’re real or can keep time. Another part of me tells me: It is good that writing longhand forces you to slow down. Just because your mind is moving at a certain pace doesn’t mean it’s functioning at a higher level. Ask any Zen monk worth his weight in contemplative measures. Speed doesn’t necessarily equate to quality. Some claim first thought best thought, but oftentimes first thought is not really first thought, it is fifth thought wearing the mask or assuming the mantle of first thought. Measuring thoughts, particularly their order, is a shifty business to say the least. First thought best thought can also be transcribed as fifth thought what thought.

   It is trying to strike the balance between following the stream fount freely and abiding the god of slowness as a grounding technique. For me, writing is a process of listening and feeling. My ear is always pressed against the silence. I hear the voices and I feel into them. I feel my way through. Hear my way through. If I am not hearing or feeling anything, or if I am hearing but not feeling, or feeling without hearing, then I am at a loss. I am often at a loss. And I am wholly dependent upon unseen cooperation. That is, cooperation from that which is unseen. I am, at my best, or most fluent, at play with invisible forces.

   I choose to sit down at a desk and place words on a page. Why? I could easily choose something else. Maybe not easily, but I could, with sustained effort and resolve, choose something else. I could choose nothing. Except nothing is way too demanding. Nothing is a thrilling, exhilarating and generous concept, so long as it remains in conceptual form, at a remote distance. Nothing is never really nothing, and you know it. To long for absence is not the same as wanting absence.

   The sound and feel and textural allure of a sentence does not mean I wish to realize that sentence. That is, if the sentence were to come into being as an action, it would forfeit its charm and grace and legend. Again, and always: Distance is the key. Never and always are fraternal twins. As are here and gone.